A connector of this type is disclosed, for example, in Japanese Patent Publication No. JP 2006-351288 A entitled “Connector” and referred to as Patent Document 1. Referring to FIG. 14, the connector disclosed in JP 2006-351288 A comprises a housing 510 and a number of contacts 530 supported by the housing 510. The contact 530 has a number of pairs of contact portions 531a, 532a and comprises a first contact portion 531a and a second contact portion 532a respectively. The first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a are faced each other in the state which the first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a are not contacted with each other. The first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a are displaced or separated by a connection object T1 which is inserted between the first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a. In this event, the first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a are resiliently contacted to the connection object T1. To this end, the first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a have opposed surfaces formed in concavo-convex shape respectively.
In the connector 500 disclosed in Patent Document 1 and shown in FIG. 14, surfaces of the connection object T1 is scraped by the first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a due to an edge of the connection object T1 acting as a cutting edge, when the connection object (flexible base-plate) T1 is thick within a tolerance. Therefore, there is a possibility that pads of the connection object T1 might be removed.
Also, it is difficult to insert the connection object T1 between the first contact portion 531a and the second contact portion 532a if the connection object T1 becomes thick.
A connector device 600 is disclosed in Japanese Patent Publication No. JP 2004-39479 A (Patent Document 2) entitled “Connector device for flexible printed wiring board” and is shown in FIGS. 15 and 16. The connector device can solve problems about damages resulting from the connection object T1 and about difficulty of inserting the connection object T1 between the first contact portion and the second contact portion of the contact, as mentioned above in connection with Patent Document 1.
As illustrated in FIGS. 15 and 16, this connector 600 comprises a housing 610, an actuator unit 620, and a number of contacts 630. The contacts 630 have each an upper contact portion 631a and a lower contact portion 632a facing to the upper contact portion 631a, with a clearance or a gap left between the upper and the lower contact portions 631a and 632a. The contacts 630 are arranged in parallel with one another in the housing 610. The clearance between the upper contact portion 631a and the lower contact portion 632a is wider than a thickness of flexible printed wiring board T1 before the actuator unit 620 is operated. The actuator unit 620 is operated by hand to narrow the clearance between the upper contact portion 631a and the lower contact portion 632a. When the flexible printed wiring board T1 is attached to the connector 600 and is thereafter inserted to the connector 600, the actuator unit 620 is hand to clip the flexible printed wiring board T1 by the upper contact portion 631a and the lower contact portion 632a with a predetermined pressure.